


Hic Jacet

by kangeiko



Category: Alias
Genre: Community: fanfic100, Gen, Post-Canon, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-23
Updated: 2006-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here lies...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hic Jacet

**Author's Note:**

> fanfic100 Jack Bristow and Arvin Sloane #53 - Earth. My table is [here](http://kangeiko.livejournal.com/113677.html).

Arvin Sloane wants.

That is the crux of all this, the reason your blood mingles with the nightmares inside the coffin. It is the reason why so many are dead, and why so many might die, besides. Arvin Sloane _wants_, and it is a poor, petty excuse for all this pain. It is unworthy of someone who could have reached for greatness (and you would never admit it, not in a million years). No: at the last, Sloane was brought down not by luck, or by hubris, or by avarice, but simple need. Arvin Sloane _wants_: the rest is inconsequential.

It is a matter of some debate whether he wants to be loved - whether anything is really that simple - or he wants power (pray it isn't so, as that is another almost-great man lost) or, even, whether he is unsure what he wants, precisely, and fills in the gaps with what he believes he _should_ want. Rambaldi dangles the bright song of 'purpose' in front of him and, like Odysseus, he cannot help but strain to hear the call. (Who wouldn't?)

There is nothing there, of course. You cannot give great men purpose: it is breathing life into a corpse, and it is not for mortals to attempt. Not even those, like Rambaldi, who will not yield to the shackles of their lives. (Did he even exist, you wonder, or is this some cosmic joke at your expense?)

Truly great men - and by 'men', of course, you are thinking of a small girl-child with soft hair and wide, uncomprehending eyes - are not given a purpose. They forge it themselves, and suffer for it. That suffering is not through choice, but through necessity, and if you could have spared her even a moment of it by offering your life sooner - even sooner - soonest (before you even lived, and wouldn't that have been better?) - you would have done so and not thought twice.

"Jack," he says, and he reaches out in the darkness. His hand connects with yours and curls around your fingers, strong and warm. It has been a minute, maybe; perhaps a year. You cannot tell.

(You don't care.)

"Jack. I'm sorry, Jack. I'm so sorry."

It is because of this small thing, this _want_ of something so inconsequential - because its definition is ridiculous, and none should attempt it for fear of ridicule - that the world turns and Arvin Sloane gets out of bed in the morning. Gets out of bed. Showers. Shaves. Puts on clothing. Visits his daughter's bedside, accompanied by three guards. Thanks his friends for his freedom, for it is on their sufferance that he is free and he is loved.

And wonders which of his beloved friends he would not betray for this, the endless song.

"What for?" You ask. "Which part are you sorry for?"

He does not answer.

_Arvin does not want this but _does_ want it, all at once, as if the pain of sacrifice makes him a better person. As if relinquishing his iron grip on Sydney or Nadia or Jack or on so many of those lesser loves around him were something so pure, so magnificent, so as to excuse all other wants._

If he were to give up this friend, this love, this bond, the universe would owe him something. Would owe him Rambaldi.

Sloane says something incoherent, and it takes you a very long moment to realise that he is crying.

You pull your hand away. (You try to.)

This is not logic. No computer, no probability matrix, no understanding of humanity would come to this conclusion.

It is, however, entirely true. It is balance (though we are in flux, and balance works across millennia and we are not patient and as we are within it would not recognise it anyway). It is the curious machine-logic that no machine would arrive at logically.

It is why a computer could never replace a theorist such as yourself, in whose head numbers swim incoherently; where synapses cross the gaps between, "he did not answer" and "he's sorry" and you can't see him because there's something heavy across your face.

(And you would be just. like. him.

If only you could move. If only you could stop being dead for just one tiny _second_ -)

"Jack. _Jack._"

Arvin Sloane _wants_.

(Oh, you motherf-

Listen to you swear, like some sailor off the boat, you parents would be ashamed if they could hear; you _daughter_ would be ashamed, and you should have shot Irina when you had the chance.)

All else pales in comparison.

*

fin


End file.
